With one of the biggest tech launch events (Google Pixel), lined up for today, Google has now reportedly hired David Foster from Amazon, who developed the Kindle.

David Foster has been a veteran leader for five years while building Amazon products like the Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Voyage and the Kindle Fire tablet, and will now head Google’s Pixel division. (Source: Reuters)

With one of the biggest tech launch events (Google Pixel), lined up for today, Google has now reportedly hired David Foster from Amazon, who developed the Kindle. David Foster has been hired as the new Vice-President of product engineering in hardware division. According to a report in ‘The Information’, Foster will lead future development on Google’s new range of Pixel smartphones. Foster has been a veteran leader for five years while building Amazon products like the Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Voyage and the Kindle Fire tablet.

Apart from that he also headed the efforts in developing the Echo and Dash products. All these products were started in Amazon’s experimental Lab126 division. David Foster was the senior director at Apple for six years. Then went on to the guitar company called Gibson as the Chief Technology Officer. Then he joined as GM Hardwar at Microsoft. And finally went on to Amazon for the Lab126 in the year 2011, where he developed all those products. This move by Google is going to kick start its efforts in the hardware sector which have not been its forte. But will the aggressive marketing and hiring, it has made its intentions abundantly clear.

Foster has been hired to head the Pixel smartphone division and will report to the ex-Motorola president, Rick Osterloh who currently leads a new hardware division at Google. Google has decided to drop the Nexus branding to present its brand new range of smartphones, Pixel, which will likely be launched today. Google has gone all out this time with its marketing strategy, by presenting the new phones as ‘Made by Google’.